The Byron hinterland is one of the more biodiverse corners of coastal eastern Australia. What follows is a practical field guide to the animals you are most likely to encounter on a Rise Up tour, with enough natural history to make the encounter meaningful rather than merely photogenic.
Platypus
The platypus is one of the most evolutionarily unusual mammals on Earth. A monotreme, meaning it lays eggs rather than bearing live young, the platypus combines a duck-like bill equipped with electroreceptors, a beaver-like tail, webbed feet, and venomous spurs on the hind legs of males into an animal that defies every category. European naturalists who first encountered preserved specimens in the 1790s suspected they were looking at a taxidermy hoax.
Platypus inhabit the creek and river systems of the Byron hinterland. They are most active at dawn and dusk, feeding on invertebrates, worms, and crustaceans in the creek bed. They locate prey using the electroreceptors in their bill, which detect the weak electric fields produced by the muscular contractions of their prey items. They do not use their eyes while feeding underwater.
Sighting a platypus requires patience, quiet movement, and the right timing. Early morning tours have the best chance. The animals are sensitive to noise and disturbance. A group of eight people moving quietly along a creek bank has a reasonable chance of a sighting. A group talking loudly has almost none.
Koalas
The hinterland supports koala populations, though sightings are not guaranteed on any given tour. Koalas spend up to 22 hours a day resting in the fork of a tree, which means they are present and simply not immediately obvious. The key is knowing which tree species to look at. Koalas have strong preferences for specific eucalyptus species for both feeding and resting. The forest guides at Rise Up know the tree species of their tour areas and where to look.
Koalas are largely silent except during the breeding season from October to February, when males produce a loud bellowing call that is one of the more surprising sounds in the Australian bush. Outside of breeding season, their presence is indicated by fresh scratches on tree bark, clumps of half-digested leaf material at the base of a trunk, and the strong scent of eucalyptus oil that accumulates in their resting spots.
Flying foxes
Three species of flying fox are found in the Byron Bay region: the grey-headed flying fox, the black flying fox, and the little red flying fox. Flying foxes are the largest bats in Australia, with wingspans of up to a metre in the larger species. They roost in large colonies, sometimes numbering in the tens of thousands, in specific vegetation types.
Flying foxes are critical to the health of the rainforest. They are among the primary pollinators and seed dispersers for many native tree species, carrying pollen and seeds across distances that smaller animals cannot. The depletion of flying fox populations has measurable consequences for forest regeneration. The camps in the Byron Bay area are some of the largest on the east coast.
On evening and night tours, flying foxes can be seen in large numbers moving from roost sites to feeding areas over distances of up to 50 kilometres. The sight of a large group of flying foxes crossing the sky against the last light of evening is one of the more dramatic natural events available in the Northern Rivers region.
Bush turkeys
The Australian brush turkey, to give it its full name, is one of Australia's megapodes: birds that incubate their eggs in large mounds of decomposing vegetation rather than sitting on them. A male brush turkey maintains and manages a mound that can be several metres in diameter and over a metre high. The decomposition of the organic material generates heat, and the male regulates the internal temperature of the mound by adding or removing material from the top.
Brush turkeys are common on the Cape Byron Walking Track and throughout the hinterland forests. They are comfortable around humans and appear in gardens and picnic areas as well as in the forest. They are not threatening but they are persistent and they have been known to dismantle campsite equipment in the pursuit of food.
Wedge-tailed eagles and sea eagles
Wedge-tailed eagles, with wingspans of up to 2.3 metres, are the largest birds of prey in Australia and are found throughout the hinterland. White-bellied sea eagles, closely associated with coastal and riverine environments, are frequently seen over the waterways and forested valleys of the region. Both species soar on thermals that build over the valleys in the late morning and afternoon.
The presence of a large raptor overhead is often the first indicator that something interesting is happening in the landscape below. Both species will circle and dive over mammal activity, dead animals, or concentrations of prey, giving the observant visitor an aerial map of ground-level activity.
At night
The night tour adds an entirely different cast of wildlife to the above. Sugar gliders move through the canopy after dark. Bandicoots rustle in the leaf litter on the forest floor. The southern boobook owl calls from the trees above the glow worm sites. Cane toads, an introduced species that has become a significant pest in the region, are also visible at night near water. The guide will point them out. They are large, brown, and obvious, and they have done more damage to the fauna of the Northern Rivers than any other single introduced species in the region.
The glow worm display itself, once you have been standing in darkness for several minutes and have let your eyes fully adapt, is the centrepiece of the night tour. But the surrounding soundscape, the owls, the frogs, the flying foxes overhead, the occasional splash of a water creature in the creek below, is equally worth attending to.